LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1973, Page 247

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HIGHER EDUCATION 247

placed into the highest priority category by the synodical officials
who are working with the distribution of thankoffering funds,
and hopefully will get under way in the coming months and
be completed during the next biennium.

This study as envisioned by the board will begin with the
premise that synodical higher education cannot operate effec-
tively on a ‘‘wait and see” basis. Such a basis ignores realities
and encourages the preservation of myths and wishful thinking.
It leads to harmful duplication of effort and to wasteful uses of
the already limited resources.

The board further believes that the future can, under God,
be determined by principles as well as by events, and by men
and women of the church no less than by the mere passage of
time. But, if men and women, guided by principles, are to make
wise decisions the all important, pertinent information must be
available to them regularly.

The board considers three characteristics basic to any for-
ward looking approach in synodical higher education at this
time. These are flexibility, concentration of resources, and
ongoing evaluation. Any planning, to serve our colleges and
seminaries effectively, must remain open to changes in curricu-
lum, methods of instruction and learning, educational finance,
and the manner in which our schools are structured and related
to one another. Planning must provide a way to abolish present
unnecessary duplication of effort, avoid future duplication,
and develop the special strengths of individual campuses. Plan-
ning must allow for regular ongoing evaluation of the entire
system and of each individual institution in the light of its
synodically approved objectives.

At the same time, the board hopes to keep the project close
to the hard political and fiscal realities. Closing or consolidating
schools will continue to be extremely difficult, if not impossible,
because of regional and school loyalties and the facts that
schools can only be closed by conventions or consolidated with
the agreement of the local board of control. Funds for higher
education are likely to continue to be limited, although hopefully
the decline in support can be halted.

Opportunities and Needs

As the board looks ahead, certain opportunities and needs
which reflect both where we are now and where we should be
aiming should be discussed.

—In Programs and Preparation for Vocation

As is obvious from the tone of this report, the board not only
feels that the schools of the Synod have continued to play an
important and legitimate role, but is also persuaded that they
are individually and collectively doing an excellent job. Con-
tinuous contact in many forms, by both board and staff members,
with each school at the operating level sustain this persuasion.
These contacts consist of regular academic and financial reports,
many personal observations, written and telephone communica-
tions, staff and department meetings, class visits, and literally
hundreds of interviews and conversations with administrators,
faculty members, students, and nonteaching staff members.

These observations point overwhelmingly to extremely care-
ful and conscientious management, dedicated leadership, com-
petent and highly professional teaching and guidance, and an
overall commitment of remarkable depth and vigor to the estab-
lished objectives of the institutions. Many testimonies by persons
outside our Synod, including members of accrediting teams and
representatives of other schools and churches support the
conviction that these conclusions are not simply due to family
loyalty.

Still, our board assumes that every institution can be im-
proved; we are not asking if our schools can be improved but
where? And how? We are continuously concerned about quality
of instruction, not because our instructors are incompetent
but because really masterful teaching is an evasive art which
demands self-evaluation and the evaluation of colleagues and
students if it is to remain alive and well. Obviously the most
highly educated and conscientious instructor can become book-
ish and unintelligible; he can unwittingly use methods and
vocabulary more appropriate to post-doctoral seminars than to
college freshmen.

It has been said that there is no college anywhere which is
not about to come out with a ‘‘new” curriculum, which the stu-
dents say they cannot distinguish from the old. But, in fact,
education today would be tragic and virtually hopeless if change

were not continuous. Academic specialities and practices and
private interests can quickly set into the hardest concrete,
requiring a jackhammer to prepare the way for something more
functional and meaningful.

Many special needs for institutional improvement can be
summarized by saying that more efforts need to be expended
to discover and become sensitive to the actual and total needs
of students. That is not intended to be simply a sentimental
and pious statement: it is meant to be a very realistic and hard-
headed one. We do not mean that education consists merely of
asking students what they would like to do (although student
suggestions are often profound, practical, and still universally
underrated). But we do acknowledge the truth of the old, old
observation that the only legitimate way to evaluate a school
is to look closely at its graduates as they function in their con-
temporary life and society. We confess with the old school-
marm that she is teaching children, not arithmetic (in this case,
persons rather than subjects). We must explore the implications
of every school’s written objectives about helping students to
develop all those skills and attitudes which will be important
to them in fulfilling their total vocational commitment.

All this means that we must keep one another sensitive to
such realities as the relationship of learning to readiness and
interest; the proportion and place of outside-the-classroom
learning: the importance in Christian education of relating ‘head
knowledge”’ to personal faith and life: the need to develop a
valid and distinctively Christian style of life that is appropriate
to our contemporary, urbanized, secular American society: the
basic Biblical idea of vocation as a dominant theme in personal
development and in establishing life-goals; the character of the
campus population as an integrated community rather than a
mass of transients; the need for interpersonal involvement as the
context and stimulus for ministerial preparation; and the need
to acquire a sense and use of freedom with responsibility as
prerequisite for adequate professional performance.

This educational table of duties (to which every thoughtful
educator would like to add a dozen more) becomes all the more
important as, for reasons discussed elsewhere in this report,
the number of non-church-work students enrolled in synodical
colleges increases. Nothing could be more disastrous to the
schools and to the students involved than to allow one half of
the school to be one kind of institution, preparing people for
a life of Christian ministry, and to let the other half of the school
be another kind of institution, ‘selling’ liberal arts education
to students whose occupational goals are of no special concern.
How to prepare students rocationally (not occupationally or
professionally) for careers other than the professional, public,
ecclesiastical ministry is the art which many of the schools need
to acquire rather quickly. Also needed are the additional
changes required in our schools if they are to become attractive
to students from racial and cultural minorities. The future suc-
cess in recruitment of these students is tied directly to the effec-
tiveness and speed of these changes.

—In Placement of Ministers

One development at the synodical colleges and seminaries
which drew the attention of many members of the church was
the shift in the supply/demand situation, that is, in the ratio of
candidates to calls. For many years the church had grown
accustomed to a shortage of candidates: more calls were sent
to the Board of Assignments annually than there were candi-
dates to fill them. After some years of gradual change, which
largely went unnoticed, the balance finally tipped. For the past
2 years there have seemingly been more candidates than calls.
The word ‘‘seemingly” is in order because the real situation
cannot be described so simply.

As might be expected, some panic developed. It was inevita-
ble that the word ‘overproduction’ should be immediately
tossed about. Middle-aged pastors and teachers quickly recalled
and recounted their unhappy experiences during the depression
and postdepression days. However, the months which have now
elapsed permit a somewhat different perspective.

It is, to begin with, somewhat misleading to use the term
“overproduction.” The schools are really not producing more
candidates; the church is using fewer. For many reasons — social,
ecclesiastical, and economic -— districts are opening fewer mis-
sions, congregations are opening fewer schools and classrooms,
some Lutheran elementary schools have been closed, agencies
are employing fewer personnel. Consequently, the traditional
demand is admittedly down.